The present invention relates to a vehicular cornering lamp system for variably changing the illuminating direction of a lighting device in accordance with a direction of steering of the vehicle.
Automotive vehicles have a pair of headlamps provided on left and right sides of the front of the vehicle in order to provide illumination in the forward direction. The headlamps are fixedly mounted so as to provide illumination only the forward direction of the vehicle. As a result, when the vehicle is traveling on a curry road, it is impossible to always provide sufficient illumination in the direction of movement of the car, sometimes creating a dangerous situation.
To solve this problem, the addition of auxiliary headlamps having a wide diffusion angle may be considered. However, with this approach there arises a problem in that the road surface may be made to look relatively dark when the vehicle is traveling on a straight road because of light reflected from a guardrail along the shoulder of the road.
There has been recently been proposed a cornering lamp system in which "steering interlock" (SI) lamps are provided whose illuminating direction (illuminating angle) is varied in accordance with the steering direction of the vehicle so that the road in the direction of movement of the vehicle is continuously illuminated by the SI lamps.
For example, there has been proposed a cornering lamp system in which the illuminating direction of a right SI lamp is changed when steering to the right while the illuminating direction of a left SI lamp is fixed in the forward direction (straight-ahead direction: illuminating angle 0.degree.), whereas the illuminating direction of the left SI lamp is changed when steering to the left while the illuminating direction of the right SI lamp is fixed in the forward direction.
If such a cornering lamp system is employed, light reflected from the guardrail can be eliminated by reducing the diffusion angle, and safety for nighttime driving is enhanced because bright illumination is always provided in the direction of movement of the vehicle.
In the above-mentioned cornering lamp system, however, auxiliary headlamps (left and right SI lamps) other than the headlamps must be operated continuously. There is a problem, therefore, in that the total amount of electric power consumed by the headlamps is high.